In most existing vehicle electrical systems, especially those which have a relatively high-powered final stage, it was believed that high voltage loads or surge voltages presented no extenuating problems.
Thus, in the past, it was a very rare occasion to provide an interconnection of the generator to an electronic field regulator with integrated overvoltage protection, such as shown and described in the Technical Notice, Generators, Bosch, issued May 21, 1974. In this case, the overvoltage protection essentially consists of a thyristor which is used to short-circuit the excitation winding of the generator in case of an overload fault. However, it has been found that such a special field regulator with overvoltage protection system had not been included in many of the existing vehicular antiskid brake control systems.